Great Singers, First Series eBook

the composer and wife to Berlin. During the Prussian
King’s occupation he made Faustina many magnificent
gifts, an exceptional generosity in one who was one
of the most penurious of monarchs as well as one of
the greatest of soldiers. Faustina continued
to sing for eight years longer, when, at the age of
fifty-two, she retired from the long art reign which
she had enjoyed, having held her position with unchanged
success against all comers for nearly forty years.

III.

In notable contrast to the career of Faustina was
that of her old-time rival, Cuzzoni. After the
Venetian singer retired from London, Cuzzoni again
returned to fill an engagement with the opposition
company formed by Handel’s opponents. With
her sang Farinelli and Senesino, the former of whom
was the great tenor singer of the age—­perhaps
the greatest who ever lived, if we take the judgment
of the majority of the musical historians. Cuzzoni
was again overshadowed by the splendid singing of
Farinelli, who produced an enthusiasm in London almost
without parallel. Her haughty and arrogant temper
could not brook such inferiority, and she took the
first opportunity to desert what she considered to
be an ungrateful public. We hear of her again
as singing in different parts of Europe, but always
with declining prestige. In the London “Daily
Post” of September 7, 1741, appeared a paragraph
which startled her old admirers: “We hear
from Italy that the famous singer, Mrs. C-z-ni, is
under sentence of death, to be beheaded for poisoning
her husband.” If this was so, the sentence
was never carried into execution, for she sang seven
years afterward in London at a benefit concert.
She issued a preliminary advertisement, avouching
her “pressing debts” and her “desire
to pay them” as the reason for her asking the
benefit, which, she declared, should be the last she
would ever trouble the public with. Old, poor,
and almost deprived of her voice by her infirmities,
her attempt to revive the interest of the public in
her favor was a miserable failure; her star was set
for ever, and she was obliged to return to Holland
more wretched than she came. She had scarcely
reappeared there when she was again thrown into prison
for debt; but, by entering into an agreement to sing
at the theatre every night, under surveillance, she
was enabled to obtain her release. Her recklessness
and improvidence had brought her to a pitiable condition;
and in her latter days, after a career of splendor,
caprice, and extravagance, she was obliged to subsist,
it is said, by button-making. She died in frightful
indigence, the recipient of charity, at a hospital
in Bologna, in 1770.